Prognosti-Ranking the 2012 Playoffs: Part III

And so it comes to two. Our intended-to-be three part series preemptively ranking the playoff teams based on our expectations for them was to end tonight, with our predictions for both the final un-predicted 2nd round matchup (Spurs vs Grizzlies), the conference finals, and — at last — the 2012 Gothic Ginobili pick for the team we think will raise the banner (in — spoiler alert — a tough 7 game slog). Or at least, that was what was SUPPOSED to happen. Then I wrote an incredible amount about the prospective finals, looked at my word count RIGHT as I was about to post it, got embarrassed, and realized the only reasonable way to do this was to split it into Part III and a final post examining the matchup. So… yep. Final part comes tomorrow at lunch. Until then, visit Part I for the first 6 teams, Part II for the next 5, and click the jump to identify our last five standing.

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WHY THEY'LL DO BETTER: Because they're facing the Spurs.

I hate tired narratives about how any has "another team's number" after a single playoff series. But there's absolutely no denying that last year's Grizzlies obliterated the Spurs in last year's playoffs, and thoroughly dismantled a 61-win team like it was nothing. The common refrain of "well, Manu's arm was broken!" is true in fact but not necessarily as impactful as Spurs fans would like to admit -- even against the defense of Tony Allen (and with a broken arm, as I just noted), Manu's playoff PER in 2011 was 22.3 -- not quite as good as his regular season PER, but good enough that it's hard to argue he could've played much better against Allen's lockdown defense even without the broken arm. After all; it's his best playoff PER in his entire career.

While the Spurs almost certainly would've won game 1 against the Grizzlies if Manu had been around, that still would've necessitated a game 7 victory to advance -- even with home court advantage, with how the Memphis bigs were abusing Tim, I have trouble believing that a game 7 for the series (even in San Antonio) was anything but a 50-50 proposition, or some percentage in favor of the Grizzlies. They had the Spurs number last year. And, as is commonly reported, they're arguably better this year. Sure, they don't have Randolph producing the finals MVP type numbers he produced last year against the Spurs -- they instead have Rudy Gay in place of Shane Battier, which is the equivalent of trading in a 1995 Camry directly for a brand new Masarati. Tony Allen is getting into his late-season dominant form.  Mike Conley is playing his best ball of the season. What's not to like, here? How do the Spurs beat them? Are the Spurs really better than last year?

WHY THEY WON'T: I realize it was the regular season. I realize that this Grizzlies team has a higher ceiling with Rudy Gay in the place of Shane Battier, and I realize that they're younger than the Spurs. But I can't help feeling this Memphis team is feeling the 66 game season far, far more than the Spurs are, and I can't help but think that the Spurs' record against the Grizzlies this season (a regular season sweep) actually meant something. There are a few reasons I lean this way.

• It's an underreported story, but Marc Gasol has been absolutely lumbering up the court after halftime of every game since the ides of March. While he's shown flashes of the casual dominance we expect from one of the 5 best centers in the league, he's also been exhausted down the stretch of almost every close Grizzlies game in recent memory. When the team froze him out late in the game against the Clippers, that wasn't because they simply forgot he existed -- it's because Gasol hasn't been strong enough to play go-to-guy crunch time minutes since March. Frankly? We shouldn't be all that surprised about it. In the 2012 season, Gasol quietly played just 200 fewer minutes than he played last season despite 800 fewer available minutes to play. The net result: in 2011, Gasol played 65.7% of all possible regular season minutes for the Grizzlies... which does not compare favorably with 2012, where he's played 74.8% of them. An almost 10% rise in the percentage of total minutes played is an exhausting increase in a normal season. Double that if you consider that he played all of these minutes in a shorter, more compressed timeframe.

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